A magnitude 5.6 earthquake struck 215 km southwest of Port McNeill, Canada, at 04:49 UTC on August 1, 2026. The U.S. Geological Survey set its tsunami flag to 0 and gave the event a green PAGER alert.
The numbers
The USGS puts the epicenter at 49.4394 N, 129.5110 W and lists the depth as 10 km. The agency marks that depth as operator assigned, which is the detail that matters when reading any shallow figure. The reviewed moment tensor solution gives a derived depth of 11.5 km and the same Mww magnitude of 5.6.
The location is well constrained. The agency used 73 stations and 74 phase readings, with an azimuthal gap of 127 degrees. Horizontal error is 5.84 km and vertical error 1.855 km. The closest station sat 1.495 degrees away, the residual came to 1.05 seconds, and the magnitude error is 0.034. The USGS lists the event as reviewed, and 82 stations went into the magnitude. The origin time carries an error of 2.13 seconds, so 04:49 UTC is good to a couple of seconds, no better.
Under the hood
The moment tensor describes two nodal planes. The first strikes 222.25 degrees and dips 78.19 degrees, with a rake of 0.18. The second strikes 132.21 degrees and dips 89.82, with a rake of 168.19. The USGS lists the scalar moment as 2.76E+17, and its significance score for the event is 486.
Shaking and felt reports
Few people were close enough to notice. Twelve people filed Did You Feel It reports with the USGS, and the community intensity came out at 2.7. The ShakeMap peak was 3.293 on the Modified Mercalli scale.
The nearest towns modeled lower. Port Hardy, population 4,132, came out at MMI 2.9, which the map labels weak. Port McNeill, population 2,064, came out at MMI 2.8, also weak. PAGER estimated that 12,477 people were exposed to MMI 3 shaking, the weak band.
